Shaw, Rafael; Spain -- Politics and government -- 1886-1931; Spain -- Social life and customs
It is, therefore, hardly surprising that the Carlists have been left out
of account by those who observe Spanish political troubles from outside.
Indeed, the very existence of the old Pretender seemed to have been
forgotten by the generation which has grown up in England in the
thirty-four years which have elapsed since the close of the last civil
war. But the Spanish working classes have not forgotten Don Carlos, nor
have they for a moment lost sight of the continued existence of this
party in their own country.
The root of their long memory lies in their antipathy to the Religious
Orders. To the people the Carlists are indissolubly associated with the
Ultramontanes, and who says Jesuit says Carlist in their vocabulary of
distrust. And that the people have reason on their side has been proved
by the words and actions of the Ultramontanes themselves since the
events that took place in the summer of 1909.
The Catalonian question has been discussed at such length and with so
much confidence by writers living in other countries that I may be
forgiven if I add to their pronouncements on the causes and effects of
the “Red Week” certain information which is not common knowledge beyond
the Pyrenees, unless possibly at the Castle of Frohsdorf or in the
palaces of the proscribed branch in Venice or Trieste. The censorship
exercised over the press, and over telegrams and even letters addressed
to newspaper offices, was so severe while the country was under martial
law, and, indeed, right up to the fall of the Maura Cabinet in October,
1909, that representatives of foreign journals who tried to put the
facts before their leaders found it impossible to do so. Any man who had
once tried--and failed--to get off even the most cryptic telegram
relating to the part played by the Ultramontanes in the riots, was
thenceforth marked by the Intelligence Department of the Society of
Jesus, and if he continued his efforts to communicate what he knew, he
not only found his telegrams suppressed after they had been accepted and
paid for, but stood a good chance of having his personal liberty
interfered with. There was plenty of excitement about the work of a
foreign correspondent in Spain in the summer of 1909, wherever he
happened to be stationed. But it was not precisely the form of danger
suggested by the reports of revolution and anarchy which were supplied
to the foreign Press. Notices of that class could be procured and sent
through without the slightest difficulty. The newspaper correspondent
who was in danger was the man who crossed the frontier to telegraph the
facts as he saw them, and who was not unlikely to meet with an
“accident” as he made his way back to the scene of his labours.
The result of this regime of espionage was that all Europe was
hoodwinked as to the real crisis in Spain, for naturally as soon as
affairs in Cataluña ceased to be sensational, the foreign Press relapsed
into its usual indifference to what was going on in the Peninsula.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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